Varmites & Gremlins

Back again~Let's just jump right in:

So last blog post I mentioned that I had some "things" that just kept

swirling around, rearing their ugly little heads up at me...just like a gremlin!

Here are those pesky varmites:

#1- I wanted another baby

#2- I wanted to be a doctor

Let's address these: business meeting style~

First off "WANT" is not nearly an appropriate word for how I felt about having another baby. I can't accurately descirbe the feeling in any

other terms except it was almost a constant ache, like actual:

~pain~

 It never went away. And trust me~ I prayed daily it would go away,

as in DISAPPEAR, because the fact of the matter is,

Jon wasn't feeling it and it wasn't just a little problem.

It was a big

Elephant

size, standing in my face,

blasting me with it's trunk noise (or whatever you call that)

PROBLEM!

It was creating a rift. We couldn't talk about it, it was too hard and always

left us feeling really guilty, really angry and definitely disconnected.

So, I swallowed it, and asked God to take care of it because I didn't know how.

Secondly: All this doctor business~

Sounds a little CRAY CRAY...right?!

It all started with a little tiny book called

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

Read it-Seriously

It's about Haiti and the good work that Paul Farmer is doing over there. The burden that book

put on me felt like a 50lb weight sitting on my chest.

I needed to do something.

And one night in the car I said it out loud. "I need to be a doctor"

I can't say that once I came to the realization that I was possibly going to do this 

that I wasn't slightly self indulgent. Besides- and lets all be honest here-

How does your name sound with Dr. in front of it? How does that make you feel?

ya- I know, sounds....what? Kinda cool, right?!

BUT I kept asking myself

"Isn't that the wrong idea?"

 It's not supposed to be about ME,

but I had this weird notion that somehow it would elevate me~

Notice how "I" and "me" keep coming up...NOT GOOD.

Plus c'mon!

 I just turned 33, schools expensive, I'd have to quit my job and we'd have to

make it on one income for like 10 years! Thats a lot of pressure

to put on the hubs, especially when he nearly passed out

when I told him I was thinking about it. It wasn't exactly fair for me to plod forward so I could feel fulfilled at the expense of my family. 

These things had been plaguing me, I mean really sucking me down into an abyss

where I felt paralyzed with indescision and lots of inner conflict. Not to mention that my household was not the most fun place to be!

Then something happend

~Chapa Happened~

Look at these cuties. Photo by Mel Strobel

Before my trip to Ethiopia my sister Melanie and I had discussed several times about how we could conduct a footcare clinic. It would entail washing the childrens feet and then I would

be checking them out for any sort of medical yucky that needed to be taken care of. As we started pricing out supplies it was evident that this was going to be expensive. Making kits for 300+ kids was not going to be cheap, so we started discussing the possibility that it just wasn't going to happen. And then something truly amazing happened. A gentlemen at my church came up to me and asked

"What do you need?"

At first I started blubbering about this and that and how expensive it was, and he stopped me

"What do you need?"

I told him and he supplied everything:over 300 nail clippers, over 800 files

while someone else provided over 300 ziplocs to make the kits in:

God is Good.

Fast Forward

Walking into the Chapa community compound and hearing all those little voices singing & chanting our greeting was awesome! To see their little faces, all smiles standing in neat rows, so excited for us to be there was incredible. I began looking at their feet from a distance and decided that some serious work was about to go down!

So we set up in the chapel, wooden benches, cement floors, basins in front with soapy water and started bringing in groups of kids.

Their feet were filthy, some had no shoes or shoes you and I

would have thrown away long ago.

The first little boy sat down in front of me and I very gently put his feet into my soapy water and began to wash them. I looked up and he was melting with relaxation. His feet were a mess.

This little man was so ticklish!

Cheri Rogers was Amazing!

Heres the gist: warts, fungus, lifted toenails, no toenails, painfull callouses and manure, cuts, scrapes, bruises. Some were worse then others and we had to weed out the worst to see if we could get them on a "to see medical" list. We sent one for immediate

medical attention because of a large abscess that needed surgery.

We had 2 translators as some children spoke Sidamo and some Amharic, and as children would come sit with us we'd ask

"Is this painful?" and watch as the question would go through

2 languages and then come back to us!

It was incredible to see how language can bridge all gaps and make us all who we are:

human, living on this same planet.

It was during that very first experience with that little boy, as I clipped nails and looked over fungus, watching his face God made it very clear to me:

"See Haven, you don't have to go to medical school just to help. You're off the hook

on that one. Stop feeling guilty about not doing something different with your life.

See how I'm using you now!"

The rest of our time there was just lesson after lesson in God's faithfulness. The kids, the feast, the singing was beyond words. And then finally leaving, with happiness but also feeling like there was so much left undone.

Will they use their kits? Did they understand how?

The questions just kept swirling around my brain in the 5 hour van ride back to Addis. I had my headphones on and "Jesus in Disguise" was playing. I was taking in the landscape, processing everything and praying for God to just silence my brain alittle so I could just listen and then peace and clarity just came over me. It was just a whisp of a sound:

"You are not supposed to have any more children. It's not your story.

Your story is to go to PA school and then come back here and help"

It was clear as day and I felt nothing but relief. The saddness over all those giggling babies that would never be mine vanished. The anxiety over school was no where to be found.

Now when people ask me about having a second child I can

confidently say

"No, we're good"

And when people ask me what I'm doing with my life I can

confidently say

"I'm heading to PA school"

The Bottom Line Is:

For so long I was trying to do it my way

all the while praying for God to give me direction.

Well, you cant do it YOUR way if you want Him to have His WAY

It just deosn't work like that.

You have to be willing to say yes to the struggle and to whatever outcome

may be waiting there for you.

It's about fully trusting that you're supposed to be where you are right now because-

well,

That's where you're supposed to be!

Chapa was so incredible that I'll post more about what we did there next...
I just wanted to share my own personal experience this time~